Posted tagged ‘Potter’s Field’

Potter’s Field is the coolest idea for a crime story I’ve come across in a while. The title refers to the cemetery in New York used for unidentified bodies, and it fills up with around 125 corpses a week according to the intro. Enter John Doe, a vigilante detective whose determined to give each grave its proper name, and more often than not resolve a few loose ends from their lives.

It’s the best thing I’ve seen from Mark Waid in ages, and it’s really nice to return to the mystery genre, which he hasn’t really touched on since his days at Crossgen (unless you count his Elongated Man bits from 52). And being a big ideas sort of writer, Waid writes fairly unique crime stories that focus squarely on those ideas.

Potter’s Field works well for that, but Waid does lay it on a bit thick at time. Besides having a protagonist named John Doe, there are also cases here involving identical twins and identity thieves. I’m hoping as he tells more stories with this character he’ll stop adhering to his theme so strongly. But either way, this is a very promising start.